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Mac OS X on x86 Videos Get Apple's Attention
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Aug 17, 2005 06:01 PM
from the almost-getting-away-with-it dept.
from the almost-getting-away-with-it dept.
RetrogradeMotion writes "The OSx86 Project is reporting that Apple has served a legal notice to MacBidouille, a French news site that posted videos and instructions on running Mac OS X on x86 hardware . You can find an English translation of the MacBidouille notice on the OSx86Project's forums. This is the first known legal action by Apple regarding the hacked version of OS X and calls into doubt the future of other news sites, similar to the OSx86 Project." Slashdot previously covered the story of hacking Mac OS X onto non-Apple hardware and followed up again a few days later.
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Followed up? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Followed up? (Score:5, Funny)
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Power
Duplicates are News
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So it starts... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So it starts... (Score:5, Interesting)
You can knock Apple wanting to control things as much as you want, but I can tell you that as an Apple consumer the reason I stay with Apple is because they control their hardware. Things work. I'm not interested in defending anything that leads to Apple quality going downhill because I want to continue using Apple products in the future.
Talk about control, I see control freaks on the other side of this as well. If you want total control how about using Linux, which you can mod/change/hack to your heart's content. Or is it just more fun to try to do the "forbidden" thing?
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Apple HQ (Score:5, Funny)
"Quick! To the Applejet!"
Re:Apple HQ (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Apple HQ (Score:5, Funny)
That's correct. And if something were to happen during flight they could escape by using their iPods.
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Re:Seriously, here's the solution to Apple's probl (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Seriously, here's the solution to Apple's probl (Score:5, Insightful)
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Apple is not just ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is not minor league engineering department attached to a powerhouse marketing deparment.
It's also attached to a powerhouse legal department.
Think Different !!!
OSx86 Project Should be safe (Score:5, Interesting)
Gave it time to spread the hype (Score:5, Interesting)
Given how fast Apple's legal department is capable of acting, it's a little odd that it took this long. I was speculating with a friend that Apple probably wants to make sure that the hype has time to take hold before it cracks down. It's interesting how they have to do a balancing act between being too heavy-handed and making sure that people keep talking about their products.
It would have been relatively simple for Apple to personalize each copy of OS X Intel that it sent out to developers. I find it pretty strange that we haven't heard about legal action against whomever distributed their copy. Perhaps Apple purposely didn't watermark the installers so the balance could tilt towards hype without them having to sue a developer.
Before anyone starts posting Babelfish links... (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ubiquitous piracy made Microsoft Windows big and Linux a contender. It's hard enough to get people to try another operating system when it's free.
Not that I'm supporting piracy, because I'm not, but at this point you'd have to be a nut to grab something like this (not necessarily stable, anybody could have altered it) and install it on your system, with the risk of losing whatever else you've got on there. The kind of nut that could be an excellent customer down the road if Apple capitalized on this fanaticism and offered legit demos of the technology in lieu of the illegal downloads already out there.
I suppose it wouldn't jive with their strategy of keeping their innovations under wraps until release, but as long as the toothpaste is out of the tube you get better results with the carrot than the stick.
Re:Unfortunately... (Score:5, Insightful)
Attributing Windows' success to piracy is a common but retarded argument. What else was there for x86 that was competition for Windows in terms of ease of use? Yes, I hate Windows, but MacOS never ran on the open hardware, only on apples. Windows simply suited the typical computer-idiot person, and with Microsofts marketing and shoddy buisness deals, it won out. If Windows success was because of piracy, then why are they so rich? Average Joe doesn't get a friend to burn him a copy of an OS, and then go gee whiz this is good, I'll buy the 300$ copy to support the cool guys that made this!
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Did this surprise anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Intel Mac for under $200 (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.osx86project.org/index.php?option=com_c ontent&task=view&id=27&Itemid=2 [osx86project.org]
In related news... (Score:5, Funny)
Elsewhere, Microsoft claims to have patented the underlying concept of using lawyers as a high-level communications protocol.
Re:embrace it! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:embrace it! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm thinking that the majority of slashdot readers have never actually worked for a proprietary software company.
Contrary to popular believe on slashdot, software is not a money printing machine. On the surface it may look like software has a near 90% margin with economies of scale but the readers here seem to forget about hidden costs such as support and "free" upgrades and patches.
Compared to hardware, software has a great deal of after market costs associated with it.
I would argue that software can end up having a lower margin than hardware after all of the after market costs are factored in.
I've worked in technical support dealing with software issues in the past and I'm also a developer of in-house software for a major multi-national organization. I can tell you that software is neither cheap to develop or maintain.
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Re:Hrmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Suing someone to stop them from doing something sometimes means they actually don't want anyone to do it. Apple has a very obvious reason to keep OS X off of generic PCs, and I'm sure they're happy to flex a little muscle when someone obviously broke their NDA and provided OS X x86 to someone else, gave a public demo of it, or provided info on it.
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Re:Let's be honest... (Score:5, Insightful)
So let me get this straight...According to your line of thinking, If I park my car in a shitty neighborhood and it gets stolen, even though I knew there was a chance and put an alarm in my car, I shouldn't have any legal recourse and the thief is not legally liable??
It's obvious YANAL...
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Yes but... (Score:5, Insightful)
M$ learned this lesson a long time ago, only chumps sell hardware. The profit margin on a cdr and small pamphlet is much higher.
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Re:What the? (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't understand. Apple is only switching to Intel because they were getting jacked in the ass by IBM, and Intel had a good roadmap. It's not like they're advertising it as becoming compatibile with PC hardware. The idea is to have it all the same as before, closed hardware and everything, just now Intel happens to be making the cpu's. What these people are doing is getting it to run on PC's instead of 'Macs'
OSX would never survive as an OS if it went open to the x86 platform at large. Windows has too much market share, and o one cares enough to relearn things. Apple makes boatloads off of their hardware, and if they switched to being just a software company with an initial 0% marketshare, they would be fucked. Also, hardware support is a major issue. Everything would cease 'just working', which is a very nice benifit of osx.
If you have a problem with Apple wanting THEIR os which is designed to run only on THEIR hardware, and to take advantage of the less open architecture for greater interoperability with hardware, and putting it all into a complete package, then shutup and just don't buy it, and I'll enjoy OSX for myself thank you very much.
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Re:Apple is a hardware company` (Score:5, Informative)
You're assuming that people will pay for the OS, instead of pirating it.
Piracy doesn't dent MS's revenues, since they get the Dells and HPs of the world to pay them for every box they ship. Apple doesn't have that luxury.
-jcr
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